Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[NobleHelium]

Cue flashback cut to two weeks ago.

Lewwyn
comm won the religious election
Gaspar
we abstained
did everyone else?
i mean not that it matters at all
NobleHelium
how many votes
Lewwyn
thoth voted for comm
NobleHelium
does commodore have
Gaspar
just randomly curious
Lewwyn
and tbs and dtay voted for dtay
Gaspar
lol
NobleHelium
is he going to try to get himself elected supreme leader
Lewwyn
comm has 458
NobleHelium
out of?
Lewwyn
out of 644
Gaspar
clearly
we need to raze some hindu cities
to get the papacy
NobleHelium
ok i think that's too much for the victory vote to come up
Lewwyn
is religious diplo victory on?
Gaspar
well its enabled but banned
NobleHelium
well i hope it's banned
Lewwyn
ok
Gaspar
but noble basically always expects commodore to do the worst possible thing
NobleHelium
if anyone is going to try to win by religious victory
Lewwyn
I won't screen shot it then
NobleHelium
#1 it's parkin
#2 it's commodore




Oh so predictable.

[Gaspar]

In case there's anyone wondering why I wouldn't just vote for Commodore and hope because I want the game to be over:

1. Religious Victory is complete horseshit.
2. TBS deserves to win the game and that matters.

[Lewwyn]

Viva La Spite Vote!

[NobleHelium]

Sitrep.




1) TBS scouted Styx with his worker.
2) TBS bombarded but did not attack.
3) TBS took Tock but did not attack Magic Head.
4) No vote result yet, probably another Pitboss quirk.

Signs are not updated.

[Gaspar]

So, Noble's sitrep notwithstanding, I owe you fine folk a report from the most recently played turn, t168.




This picture is mostly eclipsed by what you see from Noble's previous post, but the primary takeaways are that TBS is methodically moving on the capital while working to capture the satellite burgs with mounted strikes and Commodore declared on Oxy last turn to raze a city which would allow him to replant on the peninsula south. You can just barely make out a rice tile a few tiles below the city with the "Razed" sign, I suspect Commodore planted a new city in that neighborhood. We slightly repositioned units to take advantage of any maneuvering Oxy might do in the area, but I do expect the remainder of Mayan cities to be captured by Mongolia. We'd certainly prefer Gurton and Homeskillet did not end up in his hands, but there's only so much we can do about that.




Here you can see we're making a move on Tan, the Oxy holding on the island with Lake Cocytus. Despite whipping on t167, there are no units in the city??? What did he whip? Anyway, barring something fantastical occurring, we'll raze Tan next turn.




Domestically, you can see we're making the modernization push towards Windmills and Workshops in older, core cities now. Once you have all the relevant techs, windmills on hills and workshops on flatland are just plan superior to farms and mines. The nice thing in this situation is you can stack workers and make those changes quickly, which is important because windmills are 5t improvements and workshops are 6. You can also see the spot where we're going to plant probably our last "peaceful" city, 3N of Cockaigne. We have a settler in production so that should be planted shortly.




Here's the current situation vis-a-vis votes for Religious Victory. I thought there might be a chance Oxy would vote for Commodore in an attempt to get out of the game but his 17 votes are insufficient to push Commodore into the win. He would need Oxy and dtay to vote for him, or Thoth. We're actually the 2nd most Hindu nation in the world. We abstained, obviously, as Religious Victory is a complete farce and amazingly, amongst all the crap that BtS introduced, still the absolute worst thing introduced by BtS. A small part of me hopes it succeeds, because the opportunities in the tech thread would be epic - I've seen first hand how awful Commodore can be in endgame situations like this - but most of me hopes that everyone else voted abstain and Thoth and TBS both invade Commodore for his insolence. We'll see.

Let's resume the city tour...




Camelot is the first of the cities from the Second Lewwyn Expedition. The First Lewwyn Expedition was of mixed success, landing us the wonderful Quivira but also planting Hyperborea, the only city we've lost this game (and for that matter the only city I've lost that early in a game in a long, long time.) The Second Lewwyn Expedition was a roaring success, however. This city is in greedy mode at the moment, gorging on coast and pushing growth. When it is in the normal configuration, it serves as a decent hybrid, able to do some units, build some wealth, whatever we need.




Elysian Fields is the jewel of the Second Lewwyn Expedition. The city site is my choice, which I think worked out well once we captured Lyonesse (though in fairness, dtay never got any culture in there so we had the seafood anyway.) Elysian has built a lot of units and its location as a hammer site is pretty great, allowing it support lesser producers in the area with units and/or get units to the Oxy and potential Commodore fronts quickly.




Agartha is an excellent example of why its worthwhile to use every tile in your empire. We're not doing that here, but we do use almost all of them. Look at the tiles its working and then look at what its producing commerce for the empire. Of course we're in a golden age, but once you can afford the modern tile improvements and get a courthouse down, almost every city is productive particularly when you've surged well past the # of cities modifier cap. When Sirian talks about how you can't extract value from garbage terrain in Civ4 like you could in Civ3, cities like this and Niflheim jump to mind. This was just a city we planted to be able to connect to Axis Mundi.




Speaking of filler cities, Scholomance is the city we oft referred to as Mediocre Wheat before it was settled. With settling of Kobol, it will lose all of its lakes, so its long term future is at size 7 working tiles you see currently worked plus that farm and 4 Rep specs. So right now we're extracting maximum GPP from it before starving it down. Value!




Axis Mundi, on the other hand, is just an outright good city. It has 3 resources and produces a bevy of hammers. Those last 2 plains hills are in the process of being windmilled.




Narnia is the city across the bay from the capital, producing commerce and never will it be more than that.




Niflheim is the epitome of a shit fishing village. This iceball was our first internal source of overseas trade and is slowly limping its way to size 11. Still, an easy net positive before you even consider how much coin in generates for the empire in trade routes - with 30 cities, its worth settling even if it weren't a positive producer. It still is the absolute worst island city anyone owns in this game. <moans about Xenu>

That concludes the tour for today. When we pick up tomorrow, we'll be on to conquered sites and late plants availed by conquest. Get psyched!

[Ichabod]

Wow, those demos look pretty nice. I wonder if you'll be able to compete with TBS when you start a Golden Age.

[Gaspar]

#sameasiteverwas

Commodore

In some ways, Commodore's game is the hardest to judge, in other's, the easiest. Anyway, here's what I said pregame:

Commodore has played the most games here of anyone in this game - possibly of anyone, period. It certainly feels like he's in every game. He's had three distinct periods of his MP Civ career here. Period 1 - Peaceful builder early, spiteful warrior late. Period 2 - I AM COMMODORE, HEAR ME ROAR. Period 3 - No, seriously, look at me all peaceful and Canadian. I think we take a little of column A and a little of column B. There's no question though that he didn't like his angry young man reputation but there's also no question that he's something roughly akin to an immovable object. That in and of itself won't win you anything, but it sure as hell means its hard for you to lose. He's quite capable at managing a midgame economy but he's a little too in love with some of the same themes, particularly Liberalism and Fishing Villages. He's a good player - better than I've previously given him credit for. But I see him as roughly the same skill level as me. He has better micro, I'm better at seeing the whole picture. His biggest weakness is that he loves the cute play, and I think that shows in his pick.

Ramesses of Rome is a very Commodorian choice. He probably just immediately decided he wasn't taking anybody Cre or Exp because they're too obvious. Still, both traits are strong in a vacuum and share some synergy. Ramesses is best used to grab the Monk Wonders, which are extra exploitable with Ind to build them and then Spi to get the roided up temples cheaply. There's a perception that Ramesses really wants the Pyramids but really, you don't want to swap that much in the government column. Sure, you can get some use out of Police State that way but mostly you just want to be in Representation (maybe USuff late.) Spi's Civic swapping is most useful in the labor and religion columns, where you can basically swap between Unit/Building cycles and Whip/GPP cycles. Its a lot of fun to play, in the same way that managers like to bunt to a lot even though it doesn't help much, because you feel like you're in control a lot.

Rome on the other hand, is a pretty lousy Civilization. Fishing is the worst starting tech and the Forum is complete garbage. Praetorians are obviously very powerful but they require dedication to really execute. How early are you willing to research Iron Working? Especially how early are you willing to research them when your leader wants Religion and Wonders? Still, they're a strong deterrent - you're just not attacking Rome with Horse Archers unless you're Mongolia or something. There's no real synergy in the two, though if I know Commodore, he'll do his damnedest to make Forums work for him.

...

The big question for Commodore is whether he's really happy continuing to play peaceful builder or he feels like he wants to send a message again. The other Ind player is dtay - if they get battling for wonders, that's good for everyone else. You've got to expect the Spi/Ind guy is going to have a leg up on Oracle. If he can leverage that to a production advantage through cheap forges, well, could be bad news for everyone else.

...


Exploitable Weakness: Overly dedicated to maintaining his rehabilitated image, falls behind in land grab, plays to another dull 3rd place.
Biggest Fear: Overly dedicated to reminding us he's excellent at being a prick when he wants to be, decides we're the team to make an example of.
Pregame Prediction: 3rd of 7

I think I pretty well nailed this one. Commodore sort of has a pattern: in the leader pick phase, he wants something slightly off-kilter that will give him boatloads of cred from the lurkers. Generically speaking, the adoration of the the fans is more important to him than the game itself. (I, on the other hand, am well aware most of you hate-read me.) But once the game starts, he does desperately want to win, except he's put himself behind the 8-ball with his leader/civ choice, so that just leads to him really irrationally hating his opponents and doing stupid shit like proposing Religious Victory. I think he'd be a lot happier if he just picked an upper echelon leader and civ and played to win. Nobody understands self-destructive behavior better than me - just ask my ex-wife.

Anyway, onto the game itself. The decision to go for Oracle -> Colossus was an easy one maybe, but absolutely correct. This map is fantastic for Colossus with all the lighthousable lakes and such. We've worked a lot of coast all game and that is a ton of flat commerce added. On top of that, this isn't the sort of lakes setup where delaying Astronomy is really going to hurt you, so you can wait very, very long to obsolete Colossus and not pay for it. He did definitely underexpand, however, as he was one of the last players to get out to the higher city counts and I do think that has a lot to do with why he's not ahead on tech. And he really didn't get much mileage out of Spiritual for most of the game, only recently building the AP. I imagine Sankore and eventually the Minaret are coming, but at this point, there's no catching TBS for tech. Basically, he played pretty solidly but for a few missed opportunities here and there. Third verse, same as the first.

Here's what I said on t75:

5. Commodore (Pregame prediction: 3rd) Thus far, I just haven't been impressed with Commodore's game. Going for an early Oracle might have been necessary, and if his expansion is this slow because of correctly ascertaining that Colossus is the wonder on this map (certainly the one I'd ban in retrospect) then maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. Still, he's on 5 cities to our 8 and if my choices are Oracle or 3 settlers, I know which wonder I'd prefer. One would assume IW is either in the short-term pipeline or already there and Praetorians could be a great equalizer. Particularly if he has the ability to take a poke at dtay, who I think is eminently pokeable. We know that Commodore knows how to play this high-tech rate/ low build queue game well - I've seen it from him several times. I think he'll be in good enough of a position to make an impact later on but he's pretty obviously behind. Note: if he somehow doesn't land Colossus, flip him and dtay.

Other than the ranking, which was accurate at the time, this is basically what happened. I do think the decision to use Praets to ignore Civil Service was trying too hard of the worst order - these capitals are great, get Bureau in them! And that's really what his Praetorians were for - ignoring Macemen. Anyway, he did a nice job exploiting the dtay situation and getting himself a very large chunk of additional land. Had he found a way to end the war at that point, he might have been able to bootstrap his way into contention. But his game post-main dtay fighting has been a bit of drunkard's walk. If the game were to go on for another 50-75t without TBS, I'm virtually certain we'd be eventually going to war. A war in which I'd favor our production capacity but would certainly be entertaining as hell for the lurkers.

Bottom Line: Commodore do what Commodore do.

[spacetyrantxenu]

[Incredulous and sarcastic post about the interminable map whining redacted during preview edit]

Ichabod's post was pure win. Brutal and sublime at once. It's like he bottled a rainstorm on a sunny day to share with his favorite friends. Bravo!

[NobleHelium]

At least we've learned not to take Commodore's bullshit.

[NobleHelium]

Edit from first version of the post: dtay is okay still because Commodore is not on a roaded tile.